Berkeley Lab Search

Advisory Board

Craig Barrett, Co-Chair

Chairman and CEO Emeritus, Intel Corporation

Dr. Craig R. Barrett was born in San Francisco, California and received his Bachelor of Science, Master of Science and Ph.D. degrees in Materials Science from Stanford University, serving on the faculty of Stanford after graduation. Dr. Barrett was a Fulbright Fellow at Danish Technical University in Denmark and a NATO Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Physical Laboratory in England. In 1974 Dr. Barrett joined Intel Corporation. He was elected to Intel Corporation’s Board of Directors in 1992, became Intel’s fourth president in 1997, chief executive officer in 1998, and chairman of the board in 2005, a post held until he retired in May 2009.

Dr. Barrett is a leading advocate for improving education in the U.S. and the world, and is a vocal spokesman for the value technology can provide in raising social and economic standards globally. He chairs Achieve, Inc., Change The Equation, a national education science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) initiative, and he serves as international co-chairman of the Skolkovo Foundation Council, a Russian Federation Silicon Valley-type development project. Dr. Barrett is chair of Dossia, vice chair of Science Foundation Arizona and the National Forest Foundation, and is a Board member of Society for Science and the Public, K12 Inc., and the Arizona Commerce Authority Board. He is president and chairman of BASIS School, Inc., on the faculty of Thunderbird School of Global Management, and serves on the Council for Foreign Relations’ U.S. Task Force on Education Reform and National Security. Dr. Barrett served as Chairman of the United Nations Global Alliance for Information and Communication Technologies and Development, and the National Academy of Engineering. He co-chaired the Business Coalition for Student Achievement and the National Innovation Initiative Leadership Council, and served as a member of the Board of Trustees for the U.S. Council for International Business and the Clinton Global Initiative Education Advisory Board. Dr. Barrett serves on numerous other boards, policy and government panels.

Charles V. Shank, Co-Chair

Director Emeritus, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

CHARLES V. SHANK, NAS/NAE, served as Director of the E.O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory from 1989 until his retirement in 2004. He received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley in 1969, after which he spent 20 years at Bell Laboratories, as both a researcher and director. His research at Bell Labs introduced the use of short laser pulses to the study of ultrafast events, allowing researchers to gain a better understanding of how energy is stored and transferred within materials. During his 15-year leadership of Lawrence Berkeley Lab, it emerged as a leader in the field of supercomputing and joined with two other national labs to form the Joint Genome Institute, a major contributor to the decoding of the human genome. While LBL Director, Shank also had a triple appointment as professor at the University of California at Berkeley in the Departments of Physics, Chemistry, and Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS). He maintains Professor Emeritus status and is active on UC campus advisory boards. Dr. Shank is now a Senior Fellow at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Farm Research Campus. In addition to his election to the NAS and NAE, Dr. Shank has received the R.W. Wood Prize of the Optical Society of America, the David Sarnoff and Morris E. Leeds awards of the IEEE, the George E. Pake Prize and the Arthur L. Schawlow Prize of the American Physical Society, and the Edgerton Award of the International Society for Optical Engineering. He has served on a number of NRC boards and committees. In addition, he chaired one study, a decadal survey of optical science and engineering, and recently co-chaired an NRC study on the Quality of Science and Engineering at the NNSA National Security Laboratories.

Susan K. Avery

President Emerita, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI)

Susan K. Avery is president emerita of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, having served as president and director from 2008 to 2015. During her tenure there, the institution increased the application of its knowledge to societal issues, providing high-quality data and analysis across a range of topics, including climate, biodiversity, natural resources and natural hazards mitigation. She also is professor emeritus at the University of Colorado, Boulder (UCB) where she served on the faculty and in administrative positions from 1982-2007. Currently she is serving as a faculty affiliate in the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at UCB, is a member of the board of trustees of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, and serves on the Exxon Mobil Corporation Board of Directors.

Dr. Avery received her Bachelor of Science degree in physics in 1972 from Michigan State University and a doctorate in atmospheric science in 1978 from the University of Illinois. Her research interests include studies of atmospheric circulation and precipitation, climate variability and water resources, and the development of new radar techniques and instruments for remote sensing. She also has an interest in scientific literacy and the role of science in public policy. The author or co-author of over 110 peer-reviewed articles and reports, Dr. Avery has given scientific presentations to a wide variety of lay and professional audiences, including TEDx Boston. She has been active in Congressional outreach, including testimony and briefings; in US and international consortia dedicated to ocean research, observation, and applications; and has worked with the Governor’s committee to develop the Massachusetts Green Economy plan. Her recent professional service includes the UN Science Advisory Board and advisory committees for the US Global Change Research program, the Sustained National Climate Assessment, NASA, NSF, and NOAA.

Dr. Avery is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Meteorological Society, for which she also served as president. Awards and recognition include honorary degrees from Michigan State University and the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth; charter membership of the National Associate Program in the National Academy of Sciences; and an Alumni Achievement Award from the University of Illinois.

Stuart N. Bernstein

Advisory Director to Goldman Sachs

Stuart Bernstein is the Founder and Managing Member of Sustainable Capital LLC and a former Partner at Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. Sustainable Capital is an impact investment firm focused on long term investments in businesses and projects that both address climate change and have attractive economic returns. These investments include companies applying emerging technologies to traditional industries in a sustainable way, renewable energy projects and sustainable real estate development with a focus on urban infill and investments in workforce and affordable housing with an environmental and social impact. Prior to retiring from Goldman Sachs, Stuart was global head of the Clean Technology and Renewables (CTR) Group and the Venture Capital Coverage Group. Stuart was also co-head of the CTR Investment Committee and the Business Selection Committee as well as a member of the Investment Banking Technology Investment Committee. Prior to leading the CTR effort, he ran several Equity Capital Markets (ECM) businesses.

Emily A. Carter

Dean, School of Engineering and Applied ScienceGerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Applied and Computational Mathematics, Princeton University

Dr. Carter’s current research is focused entirely on enabling discovery and design of molecules and materials for sustainable energy, including converting sunlight to electricity and fuels, providing clean electricity from solid oxide fuel cells, clean and efficient combustion of biofuels, optimizing lightweight metal alloys for fuel-efficient vehicles, and characterizing hydrogen isotope incorporation into plasma facing components of fusion reactors. She received her B.S. in Chemistry from UC Berkeley in 1982 (graduating Phi Beta Kappa) and her Ph.D. in Chemistry from Caltech in 1987. After a year as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado, Boulder, she spent the next 16 years on the faculty of UC Los Angeles as a Professor of Chemistry and later also of Materials Science and Engineering. She moved to Princeton University in 2004, where she was the Founding Director of the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment from 2010-2016. She currently holds courtesy appointments in Chemistry, Chemical and Biological Engineering, and three interdisciplinary institutes (PICSciE, PRISM, and PEI).

The author of over 340 publications, Dr. Carter’s scholarly work has been recognized by a number of national and international awards and honors from a variety of entities, including the American Chemical Society (ACS), the American Vacuum Society, the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science. In 2008, she was elected to both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences, in 2009 to the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science, and in 2016 to the National Academy of Engineering.

Frank Doyle

Dean of the Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University

Frank Doyle is the John A. Paulson Dean of the Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University, where he also is the John A. & Elizabeth S. Armstrong Professor. Prior to that he was the Mellichamp Professor at UC Santa Barbara, where he was the Chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering, the Director of the UCSB/MIT/Caltech Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies, and the Associate Dean for Research in the College of Engineering. He received a B.S.E. degree from Princeton, C.P.G.S. from Cambridge, and Ph.D. from Caltech, all in Chemical Engineering. He has also held faculty appointments at Purdue University and the University of Delaware, and held visiting positions at DuPont, Weyerhaeuser, and Stuttgart University. He has been recognized as a Fellow of multiple professional organizations including: IEEE, IFAC, AIMBE, and the AAAS. He is the President for the IEEE Control Systems Society, and is the Vice President of the International Federation of Automatic Control. In 2005, he was awarded the Computing in Chemical Engineering Award from the AIChE for his innovative work in systems biology, and in 2015 received the Control Engineering Practice Award from the American Automatic Control Council for his development of the artificial pancreas. His research interests are in systems biology, network science, modeling and analysis of circadian rhythms, and drug delivery for diabetes.

T.J. Glauthier

TJG Energy Associates, LLC

T.J. Glauthier is an advisor to energy and “cleantech” companies, VCs and the investment community.

He serves on the Boards of Directors of three companies: EnerNOC, Inc., a provider of demand-response services to the electric utility industry; Union Drilling, Inc., a contract driller of natural gas wells in shale deposits; and EPV Solar, a manufacturer of thin-film solar panels.

He also serves on advisory boards for several companies, including in the areas of the smart grid, energy efficient building materials, algae-derived biofuels, and innovative financing for residential solar systems. He is also on the R&D advisory board for B&W, a major designer of coal, nuclear and other power plants. He consults to large corporations and government agencies in affiliation with Booz Allen Hamilton.

He held two Presidential appointments in the Clinton Administration. For five years he was at the White House as Associate Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Following that, he was the Deputy Secretary of Energy, the number two Senate-confirmed official at DOE, while Bill Richardson was Secretary.

His pro bono activities include having served on President Obama’s White House economic transition team, and currently serving on the Advisory Board for Stanford University’s Precourt Center for Energy Efficiency.

Jo Handelsman

Director, The Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Dr. Jo Handelsman is currently the Director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as well as a Vilas Research Professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor. Previously, she served for President Obama for three years as the Associate Director for Science in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). She received her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Molecular Biology and has served on the faculties of UW-Madison and Yale University. Dr. Handelsman has authored over 100 papers, 30 editorials and 3 books. She is responsible for groundbreaking studies in microbiology and gender in science.

Eric D. Isaacs

Executive Vice President for Research, Innovation and National Laboratories, University of Chicago

Eric D. Isaacs is the Executive Vice President for Research, Innovation and National Laboratories at the University of Chicago, serves as CEO of UChicago Argonne, LLC, Vice-Chairman of the Board of Governors for Argonne National Laboratory and is a member of the Boards for Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and the Marine Biological Laboratory.

Isaacs provides direct oversight of Argonne and Fermilab for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the MBL affiliation, and the University’s founding-partner relationship with the Giant Magellan Telescope project. He also oversees University research administration, safety, and computing; technology development and new ventures; and numerous endeavors in science and innovation that cut across divisions, schools, and institutes. His responsibilities include furthering the University’s efforts in computation, data science, and innovation in Hyde Park, including the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and the Chicago Innovation Exchange.

Isaacs, the Robert A. Millikan Distinguished Service Professor in Physics, previously served as Provost of the University of Chicago from 2014-2016 after serving for five years as Director of Argonne, one of the nation’s largest science and engineering research centers, which has been managed by the University since 1946. A condensed matter physicist whose work focuses on quantum materials, Isaacs joined the University and Argonne in 2003 as the founding director of the Center for Nanoscale Materials, after working for 15 years at Bell Laboratories, including terms as director of semiconductor physics research and materials physics research.

Isaacs holds a Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a bachelor’s degree from Beloit College. He is author or co-author of more than 150 scholarly publications—most recently, a paper on the impacts of advanced battery technologies on energy and the environment.

Young-Kee Kim

Louis Block Professor of Physics, University of Chicago

Young-Kee Kim, an experimental particle physicist, is the Louis Block Professor in Physics at the University of Chicago. She has devoted much of her research work to understanding the origin of mass for fundamental particles by studying the two most massive particles (the W boson and the top quark), and the Higgs particle that gives mass to elementary particles. Kim served as the leader of the CDF experiment at Fermilab’s Tevatron between 2004 and 2006, a premier particle physics experiment with more than 600 physicists from around the world. Between 2006 and 2013, she served as Deputy Director of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab). Her primary roles were to develop a strategic plan for Fermilab and implement the plan, to play a role of the Chief Research Officer, the highest executive position in research, and to play an acting Director role when the Director is absent. Kim has served on numerous national and international advisory committees, councils and boards.

Kim was born in South Korea, and earned her B.S. and M.S. in Physics from Korea University, in 1984 and 1986, respectively, and her Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Rochester in 1990. Her postdoctoral research was done at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She was an assistant, associate and full professor of physics at University of California, Berkeley. In 2003, she moved to the University of Chicago.

Her honors include the Ho-Am Prize, a Sloan Fellow, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science, South Korea’s Science and Education Service Medal, the University of Rochester’s Distinguished Scholar Medal, and Korea University’s Alumni Award.

Piermaria Oddone

Pier Oddone serves as chair of the LIGO Advisory Committee, co-chair of the Working Group on the collaboration between the National Cancer Institute and the Department of Energy, member of the National Ignition Facility Management Advisory Committee and member of the Federal Advisory Committee for the NCI’s Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research. He was director of Fermilab from 2005 to 2013 where he led the major transition of the laboratory from a program based on the Tevatron Collider to a broad program on neutrinos, muons, particle astrophysics and the energy frontier at the LHC. He was Deputy Director of LBNL from 1990 through 2005 with responsibility for strategic planning and developing and nurturing new initiatives across the laboratory such as NERSC, the JGI, the scientific exploitation of the ALS and projects at the interface of the physical and biological sciences. He was director of the Physics Division at LBNL from 1988 to 1992, supporting new ideas such as the experiment that led to discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe. He led the Time Projection Chamber (TPC) Collaboration at SLAC from 1984 to 1987 and from 1974 through 1987 helped develop the technology of TPCs and had responsibility for coordinating the experimental program at the Positron Electron Project at SLAC. He is best known for the invention of the Asymmetric B Factory, a new collider aimed at studying the violation of CP symmetry. Two large facilities were built on this idea, one in Japan and one at Stanford, the latter as a SLAC-LBNL-LLNL collaboration. The facilities and associated detectors discovered and studied the violation of CP symmetry in b-quark decays proving the Kobayashi-Maskawa theory of CP violation in particle physics. He received the Panofsky Award of the American Physical Society for this invention. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Academia Nacional de Ciencias del Perú. He has received honorary degrees from the Illinois Institute of Technology, Universidad Ricardo Palma in Lima, Perú and Universidad de San Martín in Tarapoto, Perú. He received a BS degree from MIT (1965), a Ph.D from Princeton University (1970) and was a post-doctoral fellow at Caltech (1970-72) before joining LBNL in 1972.

Ram Seshadri

Member At Large, Academic Council Special Committee on Lab Issues (ACSCOLI), Academic Senate, University of California

Ram Seshadri received his Ph.D. in solid-state chemistry in 1995 from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. After post-doctoral fellowships in the CNRS-CRISMAT lab in Caen, France, and then in the University of Mainz, Germany, he joined the faculty of the Indian Institute of Science in 1999. He moved to UC Santa Barbara in 2002, and since 2008 has been Professor in the Materials Department and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. He also directs UCSB’s National Science Foundation Materials Science and Engineering Research Center (NSF-MRSEC). Dr. Seshadri’s research and teaching focus on crystal chemistry, and crystal-structure – property relations in functional inorganic materials. Materials functions of interest to his research group include phosphors for solid-state lighting, magnetic materials, thermoelectric materials, ferroic materials, photovoltaics, and materials displaying redox and ion transport (for battery applications). A unifying theme in his research group is the compositional tuning of the properties of extended solids through solid solution. Dr. Seshadri is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and of the American Physical Society.

Larry L. Smarr

Founding Director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2)Harry E. Gruber Professor, Computer Science and Engineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering

Larry Smarr is the founding Director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), a UC San Diego/UC Irvine partnership, and holds the Harry E. Gruber professorship in UCSD’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering. Before that he was the founding director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at UIUC. Smarr carried out theoretical, observational, and computational astrophysics for 25 years, has driven the early development of foundational components of our global cyberinfrastructure, and most recently has become a pioneer in the quantified self movement. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, as well as a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He served on the NASA Advisory Council to 4 NASA Administrators, was chair of the NASA Information Technology Infrastructure Committee and the NSF Advisory Committee on Cyberinfrastructure, and for 8 years he was a member of the NIH Advisory Committee to the NIH Director, serving 3 directors. He received his PhD in Physics at the University of Texas at Austin and spent three years as a Harvard Junior Fellow. Smarr can be followed on Twitter (@lsmarr) or on his portal http://lsmarr.calit2.net/.

Keith Yamamoto

Dr. Keith Yamamoto, Ph.D., is Professor of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, Executive Vice Dean of the School of Medicine, and Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of California, San Francisco. He has been a member of the UCSF faculty since 1976, serving as Director of the PIBS Graduate Program in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (1988-2003), Vice Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics (1985-1994), Chair of the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology (1994-2003), and Vice Dean for Research, School of Medicine (2002-2003). Dr. Yamamoto’s research is focused on signaling and transcriptional regulation by intracellular receptors, which mediate the actions of several classes of essential hormones and cellular signals; he uses both mechanistic and systems approaches to pursue these problems in pure molecules, cells and whole organisms.

Dr. Yamamoto was a founding editor of Molecular Biology of the Cell, and serves on various editorial boards and scientific advisory boards. He serves on numerous national committees focused on public and scientific policy, public understanding and support of biological research, and science education; he chairs the Coalition for the Life Sciences and for the National Academy of Sciences, the Board on Life Sciences. Dr. Yamamoto has long been involved in the process of peer review and the policies that govern it at the National Institutes of Health, serving as Chair of the Molecular Biology Study Section, member of the NIH Director’s Working Group on the Division of Research Grants, Chair of the Advisory Committee to the NIH Center for Scientific Review (CSR), member of the NIH Director’s Peer Review Oversight Group, member of the CSR Panel on Scientific Boundaries for Review, member of the Advisory Committee to the NIH Director, Co-Chair of the Working Group to Enhance NIH Peer Review, Co-Chair of the Review Committee for the Transformational R01 Award, and the NIH Center for Scientific Review Advisory Council. For NSF, he served on grant review panels for the Biology Directorate, and as an ad hoc member of the National Science Board Task Force on Transformative Research. Dr. Yamamoto was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1988, the National Academy of Sciences in 1989, the Institute of Medicine in 2003, and as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences in 2002.

Ex Offico Members

Michael T. Brown

Provost and Executive Vice President, University of California Office of the President

Michael Brown was appointed provost and executive vice president for academic affairs of the University of California on September 5, 2017. As UC provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, he directs the development of academic and research policies; provides administrative oversight of the University’s academic planning efforts and associated budget matters; serves as liaison with the University-wide Academic Senate, executive vice chancellors/provosts of the 10 campuses, student governments, and academic leaders of other segments of California higher education, and directs planning, policy development, and strategy in such areas as K-12 academic preparation, international academic activities, library planning, University Press, research, and student affairs. His efforts are organized around the vision of UC as a pre-eminent public research university, with each campus in its time and its own way achieving this status. The provost is authorized to act on behalf of the president in his or her absence or inability to act.

Brown began his career at UC Santa Barbara in 1993 as an associate professor in the Department of Counseling, Clinical and School Psychology, and was appointed professor in the same discipline in 2000. In 2009, he became acting dean for Extension and Off-Campus Studies before being named to his present role as dean of UC Santa Barbara Extension. He has held numerous leadership positions within the UC system, including chair and vice chair of the UC Academic Senate, chair and vice chair of the Academic Senate’s Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS), faculty representative to the Board of Regents, and member of the Regents’ Study Group on University Diversity.

Brown was elected fellow of the American Psychological Association in 2001. Over the course of his career, he has published book chapters and articles focused on the cultural variables underlying career and educational choices, particularly among racial and ethnic minorities and women. His research also has focused on the importance of equity and diversity in freshman admissions.

Prior to joining the faculty at UC Santa Barbara, Brown was a faculty member at Ball State University and Wayne State University. He received his B.A. in psychology from UC Irvine, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in counseling psychology at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois.

Kimberly S. Budil

Vice President for National Laboratories, University of California Office of the President

Kim Budil is the Vice President for National Laboratories at the University of California (UC), Office of the President. She is responsible for the University’s management oversight of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). Kim serves as an Executive Committee Governor on the Boards of Governors of the Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC and the Los Alamos National Security, LLC, the managing contractors for LLNL and LANL. In addition, she chairs the LBNL Contract Assurance Council.

Kim was formerly the N Program Manager in the Global Security Principal Directorate at LLNL. She was responsible for the nuclear counterterrorism program including device assessment, pre- and post-detonation nuclear forensics, nuclear incident response and reachback, and nuclear detection and countermeasures research. That portfolio of work spans the full spectrum from basic science research, through applied science and technology development, to training of emergency responders and support for field response activities. A wide variety of U.S. government sponsors including the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of Defense (DoD), and the Intelligence Community (IC) support N Program. Kim also served as the Deputy Program Director for Nuclear Counterterrorism within the Office of Strategic Outcomes. Kim joined LLNL in 1987 as a graduate student in the Department of Applied Science at UC Davis and has held a variety of positions across the Laboratory working in Weapons and Complex Integration, National Ignition Facility, Physical and Life Sciences, and Global Security. She served twice as a detailee in Washington, DC, first spending 2 years at NNSA in the Office of Defense Science and then, most recently, nearly 2 years as a Senior Adviser to the Under Secretary for Science at the Department of Energy. In 2002 she was selected to be the Scientific Editor for the Laboratory publications Science and Technology Review and National Security Review.

Kim has been a vocal advocate for women in science, serving on the American Physical Society’s Committee on the Status of Women in Physics and has participated in or led a number of site visits to assess the climate for women in physics at national labs and academic institutions. She participated in two International Conferences on Women in Physics, leading the U.S. delegation to the 2005 conference in Brazil. She was also active at LLNL in helping to organize a number of technical women’s conferences and participating in the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory Women’s Association.

Carol Christ

Chancellor, University of California, Berkeley

Carol Christ was appointed to serve as the 11th Chancellor of UC Berkeley beginning July 1, 2017. Christ is a renowned Victorian literature scholar who returned to UC Berkeley in January of 2015 as director of the campus’s Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE). Before that, she served as the 10th president of Smith College, one of the country’s most distinguished liberal arts colleges, from 2002 through 2013. During her tenure at Smith, Christ supervised the development of the nation’s only accredited engineering program at a women’s college, oversaw a significant rise in student diversity and international student enrollment, expanded Smith’s global activities and reach, and managed a major campus capital planning program. Christ also shepherded Smith through long-range strategic planning exercises designed to critically examine and improve the college’s academic and financial models within the context of broader trends in higher education.

Prior to joining Smith, Christ served as UC Berkeley’s Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost from 1994 until 2000. During her six years as the campus’s top academic officer, Christ sharpened Berkeley’s intellectual focus, strengthening many of the institution’s top-rated departments in the humanities and sciences as well as advancing major initiatives in areas including neuroscience and bioengineering.

A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, Christ was the highest-ranking female administrator at Berkeley until she returned to full-time teaching in 2000. She has a well-established reputation as a champion of women’s issues and diversity; her first administrative position was as an assistant to the Chancellor on issues involving the status of women.

Christ joined the English faculty at Berkeley in 1970 after receiving her Ph.D. from Yale University. In addition to her other roles, she has served as chair of Berkeley’s Department of English, dean of the Division of Humanities, and provost for the College of Letters and Science.

Michael Witherell

Director, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Dr. Michael Witherell is Director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), and is a leading physicist with a highly distinguished career in teaching, research and managing complex organizations. He previously served as Vice Chancellor for Research for University of California, Santa Barbara from 2005-2014, during which time he was also the Presidential Chair in the Physics Department. From 1999-2005, he served as Director of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), the largest particle physics laboratory in the country. From 1981 to 1999, Dr. Witherell was a faculty member in the UCSB physics department. He is the recipient of the American Physical Society’s W. K. H. Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics. Dr. Witherell received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1973 and his B.S. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1968.